“And that's why the work of CAGW is so vital - vital in the battle against budget deficits and vital to the strength and resiliency of the democratic system and public confidence in our government.”- Ronald Reagan

Leslie Paige

Leslie Paige has been with Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) since 1989 in various management roles. Joining the staff as a Media Director, she has served in various management capacities during her tenure with the group, currently serving as its Vice President for Policy and Communications.

In her area of expertise, media and communications, she has worked in close collaboration with the rest of CAGW’s committed staff to address a wide range of public policy issues that fall under the group’s mission of combating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. Leslie has helped hone CAGW’s solid reputation for digging out wasteful spending by investigating, developing, and disseminating stories on government waste to taxpayers and the media.

She is also represented CAGW on television, radio, and at live speaking events, appearing on CBS’ 60 Minutes, ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, CBS News with Katie Couric, FOXNews’ Your World with Neil Cavuto, FOX Business News, CNBC, CNN, and National Public Radio, well as hundreds of radio shows.

She has written extensively on behalf of CAGW for publication in both national and local print outlets. Before the advent of YouTube, Leslie produced four one-hour, nationally-televised investigative programs, going on the road with a camera crew for CAGW to expose wasteful government boondoggles from Pennsylvania to Alaska.

In 1990, Leslie helped create and launch what has today become the group’s flagship publication, the nationally-recognized Congressional Pig Book, the notorious little pink pamphlet that exposes the pork-barrel spending habits of members of Congress. The Pig Book, along with its online database, has evolved into the go-to reference guide for politicians, members of the media, and taxpayers wanting to learn more about their representatives’ wasteful spending habits. (Leslie has the dubious distinction of having convinced the venerable National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to allow the group to bring live pigs in for the group’s first Congressional Pig Book press conference in 1991, perhaps the only time in the Club’s history that live pigs have been guests in the building, rather than on the menu).

Reviled by big-spending members of Congress, the Pig Book has been routinely quoted on the floor of the U.S. Congress as well during each of the three 2008 presidential debates by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who cited it as the resource for anyone seeking information of how to cut bloat out of the federal government.

Leslie is a regular contributor to CAGW’s other major publications, Prime Cuts, its newspaper Government WasteWatch, its monthly media alert, WasteWatcher, and its blog, Swineline.org.